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Teddington Tesco

Updated 22 July
By some remarkable coincidence, the cycle rack in the car park has now been bolted to the ground, though they’ve been placed in such a way that the two outer spaces are unusable due to the bollards. This still doesn’t make up for the overall loss of cycle parking, nor is it where it is needed – out front of the shop where it is more visible and less likely to be the target of thieves. So, if you haven’t already, sign the online petition now – currently half way to its target.

The now bolted down rack 'out back' - Picture courtesy of Teddington Town

Updated 17 July
Some (though not all) of the removed racks have been found, round the back of the store in the car park. Where they’re not attached to the ground. You really couldn’t make it up. Sign the online petition now if you haven’t already as this really needs sorting out.

Original Post – 8 July
Many towns and businesses recognise the value of attracting pedestrians and cyclists to spend their money in their establishments. Several studies have borne this out showing “Customers arriving by bicycle are more loyal than those who use the car for shopping”. One of barriers, though, is having somewhere to lock your bike up close to where you want to spend that money.

As local community website Teddington Town has picked up, a recent refurbishment at Tesco’s in Teddington has led to the number of bike rack spaces being cut in half. The result? People are now forced to park their bikes in varying locations, including in the store, many of them not locked up very securely due to the lack of racks. This photo shows the issue:

Bike Parking at Teddington Tesco, reproduced by kind permission of Teddington Town

After Teddington Town contacted both the store and Tesco’s UK Customer Care team, the response was that there were “no plans at the moment to increase the number of bike racks“. Shame when what we’re asking for is to have them returned to the same number as before the refurbishment (though more would be better)

We’ll keep doing what we can to help Teddington Town flag this issue to Tesco, there is talk of a petition being raised – you can too if you’re affected – contact them online or via Twitter.

UPDATE: After we put out the initial story about the Teddington Tesco, we were contacted by a local cyclist about the Tesco in Barnes, on Castlenau. They have removed all the bike racks, so cyclists have to lock their bikes to the trolley stand or take their business elsewhere. Tesco followed up to say they were looking into this, so we’ll keep you updated.

Barnes Update (9 July 2012): Is there? Isn’t there? Anyone have any photos they can share to settle the matter?

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One thought on “Teddington Tesco”

Of course you could always show Tesco how much you like shopping there by having a substantial number of cyclists all turning up at the same time and, in the absence of any other parking having to lock up your bikes at the trolley parking pound, or other locations. At certain times of day this may well coincide with, or slightly precede a time of intensive demand for trollies, and an unfortunate issue of access might occur.

The flexibility and speed with which bikes can assemble and disperse was well demonstrated by the flashride, where an estimated 2500 cyclists assembled just 24 hours after the Holborn fatality, rode through the streets and dispersed all within an overall window of 2 hours. Almost any Tesco in the area could enjoy a themed ‘cyclists shopping’ night, after all they were keen to showcase (well wrapped in a plain brown covering of the windows) a naturist special night a few years ago.

Unusually the Tesco in Inverness, where lots of people used to cycle around, accepted bikes inside the store and parked by the bag loading area at the check-outs, and the new Tesco local in Glasgow actually has staff complimenting me about the folding bike as I load up at the scanning terminals.

Of course they don’t match the local Lidl and Farmfoods, plus the Aldi and most Co-ops, all of which have no problem with rolling the bike into the store and leaving it at the tills to load up. So a second line of campaign is obviously to highlight the stores where cyclists are positively accommodated as customers, very often local businesses where prices are often little different from those in Tesco, for many items, with fruit and vegetables often more easily selected, and the local shopkeeper’s closer knowledge of their regular customers means less wastage, and/or fresher stock. This would also look incredibly good if you ran a cyclists special session, timed to minimise any issues of bikes in a very busy store, and show a huge (and easily measured) surge in revenue for the cyclist’s special event. It would really make Tesco think about their ‘offer’ of a highly visible and large group of customers was seen using a competing chain, with some good local publicity.